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(Daily Mail) – TO THE MILLIONS OF US struggling to pay for Christmas this year, Dean Evans and his teenage girlfriend Catherine Scott have a simple message – save up.

After all, they’ve managed to set aside £1,000 so they and their eight children can enjoy the festive season together.

So pleased are they with their budgeting that they feel qualified to hand out advice to the rest of us – advice which might be better received if their Christmas piggy-bank wasn’t full of state handouts.

The couple, who live in a four-bedroom house paid for by the council, managed to save the money after Miss Scott, 18, gave birth to twins in May – resulting in their benefit allowance being raised from £7,000 to £23,000.

Each week they put aside at least £15 of their £480 state payments in a jar so they would be able to enjoy the festive season.

The rise in handouts allows them to drive an expensive Italian sports car and subscribe to satellite TV. They also regularly receive £200 from Miss Scott’s mother.

Critics say the couple from Sevenoaks, Kent, should be ‘ashamed of themselves’ for boasting of their luxurious lifestyle.

They do, however, say they need even more from the state to get by. Miss Scott told Closer magazine: ‘Babies are very expensive, although we get extra.’

Mr Evans, 41, added: ‘Our only luxury is the £47-a-month Sky package for the TV.

‘I did buy a new Alfa Romeo recently, but we needed it because the BMW was old.’

The couple met when Mr Evans was dating her friend. They soon moved in together and Miss Scott became pregnant within months.

As well as their seven-month old twins, Presley and Amber, Mr Evans has five children with three different women.

He is unemployed and receiving disability allowance. He has no desire to return to work after an accident on a building site hurt his groin.

Miss Scott was raised by adopted parents in a £1million home in Sevenoaks.

But by the age of 12 she started playing truant.

She has a four-year-old son whose father was a Big Issue seller that she met at a train station when she was only 14.

The father was later placed on the sex offender’s register for having sex with a minor and has no contact with the child.

The couple say they want to splash out on their family this Christmas and have already spent hundreds of pounds on presents.

Miss Scott said: ‘Our families have been great. They really spoil us. My parents didn’t approve of us at first, but I told them to like it or lump it. They eventually came round.

‘As we’re all getting along, this Christmas is going to be great. We’re going to get both sets of parents round and tuck into a massive turkey, then we’ll all watch Only Fools And Horses on the 32in TV Dean’s dad bought us.

‘So far we’ve saved nearly £1,000 and we’ll share that between the children and buy ourselves gifts with whatever’s left.

‘I want to buy Dean some Elvis CDs and I’m hoping he’ll buy me some sexy undies and a big bouquet of lilies.’

Mr Evans boasts of having sex with more than 200 women but insists he will marry Miss Scott next year.

He will pay for the honeymoon with an expected £200,000 compensation from his former employer.

While it appears certain families can look forward to a good Christmas, research reveals four out of ten plan to spend less this year than they did last because of financial worries.

Parents said they thought they would spend an average of £442 on presents and other festive items.

The Financial Services Authority study also found around 16 per cent of parents said they had struggled with money during the past 12 months.

Susie Squire of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: ‘This family should be ashamed of themselves.

‘Benefits are not for luxuries or to save up in a jar. They are meant to be for the most vulnerable in society who spend the money on essentials.

‘There is something very wrong with our welfare system if a couple like this can boast of splashing out on luxuries.’

One Response

“Mr Evans boasts of having sex with more than 200 women but insists he will marry Miss Scott next year.” One wonders if this is actually the cause of his £200,000 groin injury…………..

£23,000 in their pockets – and their housing paid for by the taxpayer. That’s got to be worth around £32,000 net a year and the equivalent of around £40,000 as a normal combined gross salary! No wonder they are smiling in the photograph!

Ms Walker is right, the benefit system is a joke but how on earth can you prevent abuses like this from happening? The more children irresponsible single mothers have the better the accomodation on offer and the more the state pays them. But reverting to a system that pays no child benefit is not an option either.

It seems we just need to accept that there are those in society that will always take the p*** while we are gullible enough to allow it.

Perhaps what we need is more benefit ‘police’ making unannounced visits on those making large claims with the power to withhold benefits entirely for those who turn down jobs offered – and to make their benefits means tested.

Being in a position to actually ‘set aside’ some of your benefits to accrue a £1,000 pot to spend at Christmas is surely ludicrous. (But I dare say the liberals would have it that this is reasonable since ‘poor’ children are entitled a lavish Cristmas too).

Well, to that I say that there are plenty of hard working families that cannot afford Christmas this year and, if that is the case, lets make things fair and have the Government pick-up the tab for everyone’s Christmas – like a £1,000 Christmas bonus for everyone that is NOT ON BENEFITS!